ok here we go just paid £380 for a 2000 x reg octy 1.8 turbo xlsi good mechanically but a bit tatty body wise.Nice tight steering and suspension plenty of power as a competent diy mechanic but with no experience of tweaking cars using little or no money how can I upgrade the performance of this car

Looking forward to your help and advice

Jason

Best bang for buck - get it remapped

£200 or so

Or you could try this but it might go bang...

 

http://i130.photobucket.com/albums/p276/superman_006/parralle.jpg

Or you could try this but it might go bang...

 

http://i130.photobucket.com/albums/p276/superman_006/parralle.jpg

lol... I did this on a saab 900 turbo once.... the power it had after was amazing! for about 1,000 miles, then I blew a hole in a piston you live and learn!

lol... I did this on a saab 900 turbo once.... the power it had after was amazing! for about 1,000 miles, then I blew a hole in a piston you live and learn!

 

About 10 years ago, I had a 1998 Volvo S40 T4 turbo - it's a 2.0 litre 4 cylinder petrol engine with circa 200bhp as standard. I used it go thrash up and down motorways for a long commute and took it fairly quickly from 70k miles to 170k miles.

 

However, when it had about 120k miles on it, my girlfriend and I bought two other cars between us, so the Volvo ceased to become transport I relied upon as such....plus it was getting more or less worthless.

 

So, spurred on by legendary tales of bombproof Volvo engines, I thought I would have some fun with it - and if it blew up, it blew up, no matter....

 

 

So I did something similar to the mod above - but even less subtle! All I did was pinch the wastegate actuator vacuum pipe completely closed, by folding it back on itself, and cable-tying it like this so basically the wastegate was not being actuated at all - so if it was to open, it would just be from silly boost force.....lol.....

 

And f**k me, it turned into a rocketship! Complete with occasionally horrendous pinking from too much early boost - but I learned to drive around that, by taking my time to push the throttle pedal down. The boost built up so hectically under full throttle, that it just spun the front wheels uselessly in the first two gears - third too on occasions.....and in the wet, well, forget it! I fully expected to hole a piston, or blow a head gasket, or experience a hilarious, catastrophic failure quite quickly.....

 

BUT It kept going like this from 120k miles to 170k miles...! I couldn't believe it really, I just kept changing the oil and looking after it, and nothing went wrong at all. It didn't even use oil between changes. Seems that the Volvo engine legend is true after all! Just needed a set of plugs at 150k...

 

I sold it in the end, unclipped my cable-tie mod (which had also lasted for 50k miles lol) and off it went to its new owner, still driving beautifully.

 

Great fun. Cheaper than a re-map by £399.95 - just a 5p cable tie required!